Never Love A Stranger Part 7

He shook his head. "Never." He flashed his killer smile. "I liked it."

Annie frowned. She couldn't understand how a man this gorgeous had gotten so far in life without being kissed. But then again, she remembered, he hadn't been allowed to marry. Evidently not only marriage, but all romantic liaisons had been forbidden. "Are you saying," she said incredulously, "that you're a virgin'"

"No."

"Let me get this straight. You've had s.e.x, but n.o.body ever bothered to kiss you'"

"I was a slave," James said gently. "My mistress used me for purposes other than housekeeping occasionally, when she got bored. She also loaned me to her friends upon occasion."

Annie stared at him with horror. "She used you as a gigolo' A prost.i.tute'"

He inclined his head slightly, the slow sweep of his dark gold lashes concealing the emotion in his gaze.

"And you went along with this'"

James drew his head up sharply at the appalled shock in her tone. The first genuine anger she'd seen him display flashed in his eyes. "I had no choice," he retorted in a cold voice. "She owned me, Annie. I had to do whatever she wanted, or suffer a rather excruciating punishment. My feelings on the subject were irrelevant."

Annie stared at him, wordless. She could hardly imagine the horror of his situation. He had had to please his mistress, no matter how perverse her desires, no matter what he himself had wanted. "That's rape," she said with savage fury. "That's all it is. Rape."

James lowered his lashes again. "I did not enjoy it," he admitted.

"Of course you didn't. Who wants to be treated like an object' Like some sort of s.e.x toy'" She snorted in disgust. "No wonder you wanted to be free."

He lifted his eyes quickly and stared at her. "You do understand," he said quietly, in an awed tone.

Annie stood up abruptly. She didn't like the way he was looking at her, with something that approached worship in his eyes. The last thing she wanted was for him to start seeing her as some sort of madonna figure. Saint Annie she was not.

"I'm going to clean up," she said gruffly, picking up the greasy napkins and empty c.o.ke cans. "Kay can't stand any kind of a mess in her place. In fact, she'd kill me if she knew I'd been eating in the living room. She never lets food out of the kitchen."

James rose to his feet and picked up the empty pizza box, following her to the kitchen. "You and Kay do not seem to be the same personality type."

"No kidding. We were roommates our last year of college, and that was a huge mistake. We drove each other nuts. I think she would have killed me if she didn't love me so much."

James watched her as she busied herself stuffing the remnants of dinner into the trashcan. "I did not mean to make you uncomfortable," he said at last.

One of the empty soda cans slipped from her hand and fell onto the floor. "Uncomfortable'" she said, bending to pick it up. It slipped from her fingers and clanged to the floor again. "You didn't do anything to make me feel uncomfortable."

James watched her with a faintly amused glint in his eyes as she managed to wrestle the can into submission and force it into the trashcan. "I did not mean for the conversation to take such a personal turn."

"You mean telling me about what they did to you'" Annie shrugged. "That's okay, James. It helps me know where you're coming from."

"It is nevertheless...." He hesitated. "Perhaps more intimate a subject than was appropriate."

Annie turned abruptly and faced him. "That isn't what made me uncomfortable, James."

"Oh'"

"It was the kiss," she said in a rush of embarra.s.sment. "I'm very sorry. I don't know what came over me. I shouldn't have kissed you like that."

"I'm glad you did."

The soft sincerity in his voice melted her heart. For one wild moment she was tempted to suggest they kiss again, but reason prevailed. The last thing she needed was to fall into bed with a man she barely knew, no matter how compellingly sweet he was, no matter how heart-stoppingly handsome. She turned away abruptly.

"Let's watch the news," she suggested, striving for normalcy. Or as much normalcy as was possible right now.

James followed her back into the living room and settled himself carefully onto one of Kay's black leather chairs. Annie plopped on the sofa and stretched out, picking up the remote and carelessly flipping through channels. She paused as the image of Susan Takahashi, the Channel 12 news anchor, filled the screen. Susan Takahashi possessed strikingly beautiful Asian features, dark, luminous eyes, a mellifluous voice, and a businesslike air that had made her quite popular in the area. Her newscast was the highest rated locally.

Annie sat up abruptly as the image of a green sedan that had been twisted around a tree flashed on the screen. Susan Takahashi fixed an appropriately serious expression on her face. "In the suburbs today," she said, "there was a one-car collision on a road that has already claimed several lives." She went on to explain that the car had been stolen, and that despite the severity of the crash the occupant had apparently survived, since no one had been found at the site of the crash.

Annie was relieved to notice Susan didn't mention the tree that had been scorched by the ray gun. Perhaps the cops hadn't noticed it. Glancing over at James, she saw his features set into grim lines.

"I guess she wasn't seriously hurt," she said.

"I a.s.sumed as much from the way she jumped out of the car and fired at us," James said dryly.

"Yeah, but you never know. Sometimes people can be badly hurt and still keep going. It's an adrenaline thing. Anyway, it looks like she made it away from the car okay."

"Evidently." James frowned.

"Does it matter if she was hurt'" she asked curiously. "You said that if she didn't kill you, the Bureau would send more."

James shrugged. "The woman who is in pursuit of me hates me," he said. "She will be considerably more persistent than another agent of the Bureau might be. Had she been seriously injured, my chances of survival would be greater."

Annie thought about the woman who had aimed the alien-looking gun at them, an expression of loathing and fury on her face, and she shuddered. "Yeah. I can imagine. She looked pretty mean." "She is obsessed," James said simply. "Her desire to destroy me goes beyond the professional and into the personal."

Annie wondered just what he might have done to earn the woman's undying hatred, but she couldn't bring herself to ask. She found she didn't really want to know. A commercial came on, and she began flipping through channels. Kay had a better cable service than she did, and there were considerably more channels. James watched her.

"You are doing it again," he observed at last.

Annie glanced at him. "What'"

"You are watching programs you have absolutely no interest in."

Annie scowled. "Are you telling me how to live my life'"

"On the contrary, it hardly seems that you have a life."

She fought the urge to throw the remote at him. "I get lonely, okay' The TV's better than nothing."

"Perhaps you would prefer to talk."

Talking was not high on her agenda. She vividly remembered the way she'd kissed him, the way she'd

made a fool of herself, and the memory sent the blood rushing to her cheeks. The truth was she was too embarra.s.sed to talk with him. And yet she was uncomfortably aware that she was, in fact, being rude. He was a guest, in a manner of speaking, and she had an obligation of sorts to chat with him.

"Fine," she said shortly, clicking the television off. "Let's talk. What do you want to talk about'"

"You," he said softly. "I want to talk about you, Annie."

Annie blinked in surprise. "Uh, there's not much to talk about," she said awkwardly. "I guess you're

right. I don't have much of a life. I go to work, I come home, I sleep, I go to work again. Not real exciting." "What do you do when you are home'" Annie gestured vaguely at the TV. "Besides that," he persisted gently. "There must be something that interests you besides that box." "Television. It's called television."

"What do you do besides watch television'"

"Well, I--" Annie broke off. "When Steve was alive, we used to go see movies a lot. We went to the

opera and symphony every now and then, too."

"Opera'"

"Singing," Annie explained briefly, and made a mental note to play Dido and Aenea, her favorite opera,

for him at some point. "I like music."

"Ah. So you listen to music."

Annie frowned. For the first time it occurred to her that she hadn't listened to one of her several hundred

CDs in weeks. Maybe in months. She had developed a habit of coming home from work and clicking the TV on, and not turning it off until bedtime. "I guess not much any more," she admitted.

"Do you play games to entertain yourself'"

Annie shrugged. "There aren't a lot of games you can play by yourself. Solitaire gets kind of boring after a while. But when Steve was alive we used to play chess and Scrabble a lot."

"It sounds as if you engaged in more activities when your husband was alive."

"Yeah, well, we had a lot of friends. We did stuff with them."

"Do you not have friends now'"

Annie hesitated again. The truth was, except for Kay, her friends had all been married couples. She felt

kind of awkward hanging around with them. They had all felt sorry for her when Steve died, and they had been uncomfortable, uncertain how to handle her grief. She had pretty much quit spending time with them. About six months ago they had taken to calling her over for dinner and trying to set her up with guys, which was just another form of pity as far as she was concerned. At any rate, she hadn't wanted to be set up with any old guy. She'd wanted Steve.

"Kay," she said. "The woman who owns this condo. She's been my best friend for twenty years."

"Do you spend time with her'"

"Yeah, some. We get together maybe once a week or so. She's a doctor, a pediatric oncologist'" a job description that was bigger than Kay herself was'"and she's pretty busy most of the time. Even busier

now that she has a baby. She's a single mom. Most of the time when she calls nowadays, it's because she needs me to baby-sit."

James was silent for a long moment. "So you spend most of your time working or watching television."

Annie drew up her legs, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on her knees. "I admit, it

sounds kind of pitiful when you put it that way."

James looked at her, curled into a defensive ball on the couch. "Small wonder you are lonely," he said gently.

She blinked at the sympathy in his voice. "Look, don't feel sorry for me, okay' It's my life. I guess I've screwed it up a little since Steve died, but I'm the one who screwed up."

"I did not say you had made an error. I merely observed that you seem lonely." Annie hugged her legs and stared steadily at the TV. "Everyone was really nice to me after Steve died," she said quietly. "For a while all my friends brought me ca.s.seroles, invited me over to their houses for dinner, and dragged me to movies. They kept telling me I shouldn't be alone. But I guess for a while I wanted to be alone. I was depressed. Everything they did felt like pity to me, and I just didn't want company." She sighed. "Now I don't want to be alone all the time, but I don't know how to get my friends back."

"If they left you alone when you were grieving, perhaps they were not real friends."

"It wasn't their fault. It was mine."

"I think it was at least partly their fault."

"No. They tried hard to take care of me. I pushed them away."

"Perhaps they did not try hard enough."

Annie shrugged. There was no point in arguing about it. She suspected her married friends had in fact

found her single state awkward, and they had dropped her more quickly than she had expected. But G.o.d knew she hadn't put forth much of an effort to keep her friends, those first few months after Steve had died. It had taken all of her energy just to keep getting up in the mornings. She hadn't had much emotion left over for friendships.

In fact, she realized, earlier this evening when she'd kissed James was the first time in a year she hadn't felt dead inside.